Stop making me eat

[Cat]

Yes, I know my mother means well, and its her nature and upbringing to shove food down my throat....but I can have eating issues (nothing drastic, and I'm doing very good now....just can get real stressed about it) yet everytime I go to gathering...its eat eat eat eat...and I know if I do not eat the food nor take it home....it will be thrown out...and I hate wasting food (also a cause of stress for me)

If I don't eat....there is something wrong she badgers.....and she will keep offering me food until I accept...no matter how many refusals.

Yeah, its far from a terrible thing....just rather annoying...and its getting worse now that I have finally gotten control on my eating habits

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Oh, GEEEEEZE have you hit my Main Nerve!

AAAAAAAGH!!!!!

I shit you not, before my grandmother got so senile she couldn't remember to do it, I just about couldn't eat at the table with her. Holy SHIT, would the woman stare...no lie, she would fucking STUDY your plate like if she didn't, it would fly back to the mother ship, and didn't you just know that the moment, nay, the NANOSECOND you ate that last bite, she'd be ALL OVER YOU to have more.

Oh, dear Lord, it was so damn maddening!!!!!! She would INTERRUPT YOUR FUCKING CONVERSATION so that she could offer you something that was sitting, no fooling, THREE INCHES FROM YOUR PLATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! She's do it...to me...when I was hosting her in my own damn home! I'm her host and here she is trying to force feed me the food I've provided!

Oh, and no, she was not the only guilty party.....nyahahahahahhahahahaahah....oh, bugger me, no she was not. My father in law does it to this day! He will do it when we are eating out! I'm not sure who is worse, him or my grandmother!

And my grandmother's sisters did it too! My life has been a godforsaken GAUNTLET of forcefeeders for the last four decades! And people wonder why Italian people drink so much wine at supper! Its so they don't snap and go on a murder spree! GodblessAmerica! I used to go sit with my 90 year old Aunt when she needed a "sitter" , God rest her, and she would ask, every 10 minutes or so, "Would you like some lunch?" She'd do this for however long I sat there. Hours. And of course, she had no idea she'd even asked you once, so you had to just sit there and just politely decline as if you hadn't been asked 76 times at that point.

(insert visual of Kinkoid breathing hard, shoulders heaving and wiping spittle of her face with the back of her hand. )

My mother, doesnt' do it, but only because once she said to me and my sister, "If I ever start that shit, stop me." Well guess what? She's started that shit, and we jump all over her with the ridicule. So she doesn't do it much at all. If she does, we go, "Hey, Ma, you're doing it."

So. Um. Yeah. Little pet peeve there.

[guywithashovel]

My family is a little bit like this. Whenever there is a get-together, they like to prepare a big meal (or order one), and they often get their feelings hurt if people don't have at least three or four helpings of each entree. I'm talking about my dad's family here. I don't know my mom's family well enough to know if they're like this or not.

It makes it kind of rough for me, because I like to watch what I eat and maintain a good body weight. Many of them don't make this too much of a priority. They're not gluttons, but they certainly don't deprive themselves of anything. Right now, I'm probably close to my ideal body weight, though I could very easily develop a paunch if I were to get careless. I try not to do that, because for one thing, I hate having extra body weight on me. Also, I have a condition called gynecomastia. If you're not familiar with that, just Google it. To put it simply, gynecomastia causes men to develop "man boobs." It's not easy to spot on me when I have a shirt on, but if I took my shirt off, you'd probably see it. They're not too much larger than they should be, but still, they're there. If I were to gain weight, this problem would probably get worse. So, I watch carefully.

[Cat]

Feels good to know I'm not the only one!! At least I saw the 'rents 2x this week....so I am good to avoid force feedings for a few weeks now

[lupo pazzesco]

Kinkoid, you just hit on all the points of my family. My mother's side is Italian, off the boat even. (mama is the first generation of the family to be born in the US...) And grampa on that side is AAAAALLLLLLLWWWWAAAAAAAAAYYYYYS telling me I need to eat more, I'm wasting away!! (I'm sorry, last I checked I was obese. Teh fuck!?!?)

Aunts, uncles, cousins, all the same way. It's seriously seriously annoying, but I don't think I could rant about it anymore than Kinkoid did, so...

Thankfully, my mom, while being hospitable and offering food and drink, will back off when you politely decline, adding a caveat that the offer's always open should you change your mind.

Gaaahh. Force feeders...

[RecoveringKinkoid]

It's so damned aggressive you have to wonder if they actually are trying to be polite and not really trying to pull some passive agressive harrassment shit. There's nothing polite about badgering people relentlessly, to the point that all conversation ends. Of course, they ARE trying to be polite, which is what makes it so awful.

It's pathological.

And it's even worse for my dad, because, well you know, he's a MAN of course, and the subservience gets even worse. (my grandmother is first gen, too) I can actually see the poor man's stress level go up. She used to watch his plate like she was watching a poisonous snake, I shit you not, you could see her do it. IT was that obvious. It's hard to enjoy your meal when everything that happens on your plate is being scrutenized. My FIL does that to ME to this day.

Oddly, it used to be that if my dad wasn't around, the Top Pecking Order Harrassment would go to yours truly.

If you said, "No, thank you." You'd get asked "why? are you on a diet? Do you not like it?"

And here's the punch line, ya'll: If you gained any weight, it would get commented on.

[Lace Neil Singer]

My mum is the opposite; she keeps on about dieting and exercise all the time, when I've had problems before with compulsive eating disorder and yo-yo dieting in the past... and I finally get to a stage where I'm accepting myself, and she keeps coming out with, "You know, you could stand to lose a few pounds". Drives me up the wall. -.-

[AdminAssistant]

I come from the South. If I tell my Mom I'm not hungry, she looks at me like I've just killed some puppies. And then she rags me about my weight.

*sigh*

[McDreidel09]

Ugh!

When I lost a bunch of weight,due to Track, my friends and family wanted me to eat more because to them, I looked "anorexic." To which, I would flex my bicep and calf muscles to show them that it was due to increased activity.

Then I met the Scumbag, who would badger me to eat and so would his family. They wouldn't stop badgering me until I ate at least two "good sized" servings.

Then now that I gained back the weight, people are like "McGoddess, you are starting to get chubby" or "What size pant are you now?"

And then later on, they wonder why I have body image issues.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Ever get the "Well, YOU certainly don't need to watch what you eat!" from them?

Uh, why do you think that IS? I've actually said that, too. "That's why I don't HAVE a weight problem, Nanna, I don't let you force feed me!"

I refuse to eat just because someone else thinks I should. Unfortunately, all this badgering has made ME neurotic and pathological about it, too. Simply put, I will refuse aggressively "offered" food EVEN IF I WANT IT. Which pretty much makes me as screwed up as the rest of them.

The harder they push it, the stronger my resolve not to eat it. I've actually walked away from the table pissed off and hungry. Which, I guess, is no one's fault but my own. Dad, too. His fuse is even shorter than mine.

Husband's dad will literally surround my plate with serving dishes as the meal progresses. Also, once while dining out, he literally sliced a slab of steak off his own portion and forced it onto my husband's plate. After that, my husband had a "come to Jesus" meeting with him and he has toned it down a bit.

[guywithashovel]

It's too bad we can't turn all of these people loose into a third world country and let them give their food to all the starving people.

[Boozy]

Is this more a "Southern" thing than northern, I wonder?

Around here, if someone wished to offer food, and forced the issue in the aggressive manner described, it would be considered unimaginably rude.

I can't see parents doing that to their kids, either. What a surefire way to create obesity and eating disorders in your children.

[Cat]

Nope, we're true blue Yankees But Mom's side of the family is near 100% Italian, that where she gets it from. (that, and the only way she shows affection is forcing food and buying things for people)

And it never helped that mom is really skinny....always was, and always complained about needing to lose weight.

OH well,,,,like I mentioned, I finally have some control on my eating habits (was a bit bad today) and am pretty happy about my weight now

[MaggieTheCat]

My family and I are from Wisconsin, and they used to do something like this. It wasn't to the extreme that the OP's or RK's or some of these other families do it, but whenever my mom made dinner, she would always make me eat at least some of everything she made, even if I didn't like it or want it. For instance, if she made steamed green beans (I'm not a big fan of green beans and steaming them doesn't do much to them, imo) she'd make me eat some of them even though I didn't like them. It got really bad when I was really young and she'd make me eat bananas, and I'd get sick, and she'd brush it off and say stuff like "well if you ate them more often, you wouldn't get sick from them!" Later we found out that I am, in fact, allergic to bananas. Yeah. Thanks.

I guess I sort of do it to my husband, too, but I'm not pushy about it. I will ask him "Did you get enough to eat" or "Do you want anything else" when I make dinner, or if we go out, "Do you want some of mine, I probably won't finish it all" but if he says no, then that's the end of it. I don't force it on him from there.

[Boozy]

It wasn't to the extreme that the OP's or RK's or some of these other families do it, but whenever my mom made dinner, she would always make me eat at least some of everything she made, even if I didn't like it or want it. For instance, if she made steamed green beans (I'm not a big fan of green beans and steaming them doesn't do much to them, imo) she'd make me eat some of them even though I didn't like them.

That seems qualitatively different. My mom would also urge me to eat a little of everything when I was child. It was her job as parent to make sure I was eating a balanced diet with plenty of vegetables -- which included green beans, if that was what she prepared (and I hate green beans, too ).

From the sounds of it, Cat and RK are complaining about people who try to force-feed them as adults, and sometimes even after they've had a full meal.